Meditation & Spiritual Work

December 19, 2013

This brilliant animation on the difference between empathy and sympathy has dialogue from this talk by Brené Brown. The whole talk is well worth listening to, and this animation is a wonderful extract of one of her points, where the art beautifully and whimsically illustrates the content.

At one point in the longer talk, Brown says "Our capacity for whole-heartedness can never be greater than our willingness to be broken-hearted: which is a terrible thing, but a truthful thing." Empathy requires the capacity to be present to another – which includes being present to our own pain. This requires vulnerability, letting down the defenses around our hearts.

She speaks of this in terms of interpersonal relationships, but from my bodywork practice in Seattle – whether the client is seeing me for Rolfing® Structural Integration, craniosacral work, visceral work, whatever – I feel the question is also one to address to ourselves, to the wounded places, to the parts in pain. People don't like to feel pain, and we tend to defend against our mental and physical pain. I hear clients say things like "I hate my body," or "I wish I could get rid of this bad knee, just cut it off!", and they usually are oblivious to the violence they are expressing towards themselves.

I work with whole-body integration, with uniting the mind, body, emotions, and spirit. That means letting the mind be aware of the hurt, letting the heart feel the pain, letting your being feel how physical pain affects your spirit. Going back to the animation above, the question becomes "Can you be empathic to your own pain?" Instead of doing the sympathy trip – telling yourself something like "my [knee] sucks, but at least I have xyz in my life" – can you open your heart to that body part, can you fully feel in your body what is going on in the tissue rather than armoring against it? Can you wholeheartedly be with your own pain?

While my work could probably help many people without that kind of emotional vulnerability on their part, multidimensional transformation comes from being deeply human, which means opening to all aspects of ourselves. Being human is being vulnerable. The more of you is available in receiving bodywork, the deeper the work can penetrate, the more it can support self-healing and be more than a quick fix.

December 17, 2013

First, as a Rolfer™ who works with bodies everyday – from the ordinary to the super athletic – I'm always blown away by what the human body can do (and how it can change!), and in this case what an animal body can do. Such amazing grace as this beautiful creatures dives into the snow for field mice underneath.

Then, as a meditator and student of mind-body-spirit integration, I marvel at animals' instinctual intelligence. The narrator says that the fox is most successful at catching the mice – about 75% of the time – when it is oriented to true north as it dives. Yet, clearly an animal doesn't do this as a mental, head-based process of "plotting a trajectory." Rather, this is going to be a deeply instinctual, embodied action, and that is part of what causes the grace.

Have you ever noticed how clunky your movements can be when you are self-conscious? – like when you first try to learn to windsurf or dance? It is only when our movements are deeply entrained into body intelligence (the belly center – which the Japanese martial artists call the hara and the Chinese the dantian) that we find that fluidity. Not surprisingly, the belly center is considered the "center of being" and many meditative traditions teach practices of concentration on this area as a way to develop presence. When the belly center is integrated, we move from "fitness" to "art" in our movements. This is the difference between an ordinary person mindlessly pumping away on an exercise machine while watching the TV screen at the gym and the grace of a dancer or martial artist whose mind is focused but relaxed and deeply present with his or her movement. (You don't see martial artists and dancers watching CNN on video screens as they work out!)

The belly center truly does have a function of intelligence, as is recognized in the common expressions of having a "gut feeling" or "I knew it in my gut." Yet we so often tend to focus our minds and knowing in our heads, and become disembodied as a result. Optimal intelligence, function, and grace comes when the whole body is integrated so that mind-body-spirit function as one.

In my Rolfing® Structural Integration practice in Seattle, I work with clients' bodies to free up tensions and restrictions, to enhance range of motion, to create natural alignment, and – critically – to enhance body awareness so that there is more possibility of integrated function and mind-body-spirit integration. Let us all aspire to the grace of foxes!

November 22, 2013

I had never heard of "acrobatic gymnastics" before seeing this. As a Rolfer™ in Seattle I've had dancer and yogi clients with good core strength and flexibility, but this is off the charts.

As a meditator, I'm also interested in the concentration and mindfulness aspecs present here, which are unique since this is a team event. To do this discipline, each of the three young women must be impeccably present in her own body, with the single-pointed focus that many meditation practices work to develop. Yet as a team event that relies on intricate multi-body balance, each participant also needs to be acutely aware of what the others are doing for these combined poses, which is more an aspect of field awareness. In a sense, they have to function almost as a group organism.

If they were in Seattle, I'd love to do some Rolfing® Structural Integration on them and see what their muscles and fascia feel like. I would expect a nice quality to the fascia, as the flexibilty required of them would lengthen the muscles to counterbalance any contraction from their strength training. It's the balance of contraction and lengthening that allows the fascial envelope around the muscle to stay resilient and hydrated.

October 29, 2013

A friend shared this video with me, the wonderful vocalist Bobby McFerrin singing/chanting the 23rd Psalm in homage to his mother. I don't think you have to be religious to find this spiritual and soothing. Truly lovely to calm the mind and heart, settle the nervous system.

November 23, 2011

One of my Rolfing® clients recently mentioned a book he is reading about "rewriting your life story." Without knowing more about the book, that snippet led me to a contemplation that evening where I reviewed my life, not from the nitty-gritty of what issues and conditioning I had to overcome but rather from what I appreciated about the twists and turns and how that has brought me to growth, situations, and people I might never have otherwise been open enough to encounter. For example, I can't imagine that my "disembodied" upbringing could have led me to my life now, self-employed in this strange but profound bodywork profession of Rolfing Structural Integration, were it not for various people, situations, and opportunities that each allowed me to open a little further, expand a bit more, develop mind-body-spirit and transform past what was the restrictive norm in my family and community. It was a very heartening exploration, appropriate as we approach Thanksgiving, a time of gratitude and appreciation.

On the same theme of gratitude, yesterday I came across this lovely speech by Leonard Cohen, given on his being awarded the 2011 Prince of Asturias Award for Literature. This Spanish award honors Cohen whose "poems and songs have beautifully explored the major issues of humanity in great depth." In the speech, Cohen acknowledges the mysterious vagaries of life, the twists and turns by which unexpected pieces led him to his poetry - through the inspiration of the great Spanish poet Federico García Lorca - and to his song - through a random meeting with a young flamenco guitar player who taught him a six-chord progression that "has been the basis of all my songs and all my music."

He thus honors the artistry of Spain and concludes his speech by saying, "Everything that you have found favourable in my work comes from this place. Everything, everything that you have found favourable in my songs and my poetry are inspired by this soil. So, I thank you so much for the warm hospitality that you have shown my work because it is really yours, and you have allowed me to affix my signature to the bottom of the page."

Read that again, if you will. Let it impact you. Have you ever heard an artist pay such selfless tribute to another person, country, or lineage? Cohen is an extraordinarily selfless being, or perhaps it's that his life and Buddhist practice has led him to that over time, as he is now in his 70s. The same humility, the same graciousness, was evident when I saw him perform in Seattle in 2009: Cohen would respond to solos from members of his band with a bow, palms together, and he ceaselessly thanked the audience for coming to hear him perform, as if we were doing him a favor.

Inspired by this, may we all grow into humility and grace. May we all remember to thank those who have helped us, guided us, taught us, inspired us. And may we all remember to pay tribute to the mystery that unfolds us ever so gently.

January 11, 2011

An article called "Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior" appeared in the Wall Street Journal and is getting attention in the blogosphere. The author, Yale Law School professor Amy Chua, contends that stereotypical "Chinese mothers" who force their children to excel academically are the best mothers. Frankly, I feel like a victim of child abuse / neglect just from reading this article.

Chua shares about how she raises her daughters who were "never allowed to:

attend a sleepover,

have a playdate,

be in a school play,

complain about not being in a school play

watch TV or play computer games

choose their own extracurricular activities

get any grade less than an A

not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

play any instrument other than the piano or violin

not play the piano."

She writes "Chinese parents believe that they know what is best for their children and therefore override all of their children's own desires and preferences." It seems that the methodology is to break your child's will, and insult them if necessary. In Chua's mind, that's okay, because the result is a child who excels in school and music. The example she gives "in favor of coercion" discusses relentlessly drilling her 7-year old daughter for a piano recital, threatening to give away her toys, and calling her "lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic." (When her husband suggested that this was "insulting" the girl, Chua's response was that she wasn't insulting her but "motivating her.") She won't let her leave the paino to go to the bathroom, she loses her voice yelling at her daughter, and "still there seemed to be only negative progress." (Somehow I'm not surprised.) Then suddenly her daughter can do it (angelic intervention?), followed by hugs, etc., and a perfect recital. For Chua, the results justify the means.

Yes, the little girl learned the piano piece. She also learned a pattern of relating that is based on coercion, degradation, love as a reward for compliance, and a compulsion to succeed. This groove is being dug deeper and deeper into her brain with each similar interaction. It is how she will raise her own children, and it will stymie all of her relationship so that love becomes equated with performance goals. She will have the tendency to find relationships that mimic this, where she is either the rejecting coercer or the rejected coerced. She will equate love with performing properly.

How Neuroscience Shows Us That This Form of Parenting Is Not "Superior"

Chua states that she learned her parenting model from her parents. She doesn't question it or look further because she values the results. She is completely blind to the emotional side of the equation. I am not a psychologist, but over the past few years I have been reading and studying extensively on the subjects of child development and psychology. I have also experienced therapy and am engaged in a spiritual path where my colleagues and I work with material from our early childhoods, and it is clear from our work that episodes like these leave devastating imprints on the psyche. Everything I read by experts in child and developmental psychology is counter to what Chua writes. While Chua is a law professor, she has absolutely no credentials in anything to do with child psychology or child development or education. Her only credential is the biological achievement of having borne a child. In the human species, bearing a child does not automatically make one a good parent.

Most recently in my studies I read the book A General Theory of Love – which should be required reading for every human being, and particularly all parents. Written by three psychiatrists, it is an easy-to-read, poetic and passionate rant about how the human race has strayed so far from understanding what we need as human beings to feel happy, loved and valuable, and to be able to relate in healthy ways. Our emotional needs are hard-wired in our limbic systems. As infants/children we need love and holding. We need parents who love us unconditionally and will spend one-on-one time with us. We need reflection from and dialogue with our parents. We need time to cultivate relationships as much as we need time spent drilling math exercises or practing violin. There is research behind this, from both animal and human studies.

Children who are driven to become performing automatons may excel academically, may play piano perfectly, but will they be able to have authentic, valuable, successful, dynamic relationships with their peers, with future romantic partners, with their own children? Will they be happy? Will they know who they are uniquely as individuals, their own preciousness?

One commentator on the Huffington Post, raised by Chinese parents under similar methodology, writes as an adult: "I was good at my job. But I had chronic hives. I couldn't sleep, and when I did I would wake up with fingernail imprints in the palms of my clenched hands. I couldn't get pregnant. I was 30, a success, but felt a failure."

There's much we as humans can learn about optimal parenting – as evidenced by all the unhappiness, malaise, and delinquency we see in young people and in ourselves. I sincerely hope that no parent takes Chua's advice to heart. There are compassionate and loving models out there that will guide us better and are substantiated by our increasing understanding of the human mind and soul.

January 08, 2011

Yesterday I posted about calculating one's personal year using numerology, something I do every new year. This got me thinking about other timing cycles based on astrology, where key planetary aspects relate to rites of passage. It's interesting to note that sometimes clients doing the 10-session Rolfing® series – a big structural overhaul for the body – are in their Saturn return, Uranus opposition, or Chiron return. This makes sense, as I'll explain below. Knowing this timing can give me a sense of some of the other forces moving through their lives, besides whatever body issues they come in with.

Saturn Return (28-30, 57-59, 86-88)

Saturn orbits the sun in 28-29 years, so it "returns" to its place in your own birth chart every 28-29 years. Because the planet Saturn governs structure, each Saturn return is a time of reexamining the structure in one's life and determining whether it still fits and making readjustments to one's trajectory.

The first Saturn return at age 28-30 is often tumultuous. Up until this point, your life has often been structured by others – your parents, society, the school system, etc. In a sense it's the time of coming into true adulthood when the individual decides what old structures didn't work and what new ones s/he wants to put in place. So we can find people quitting jobs, changing direction, divorcing – if those things were "wrong" for them – or instead getting married, starting businesses, going back to school to build structure. I can't count how many Rolfing clients I've had who are choosing to do a series at this point in their lives, it's quite common. They are usually bursting with energy and trying to feel out their next step in life and wanting to get their bodies and energies in alignment with that.

The second Saturn return at around age 57-59 is more about moving into wisdom and spirit. In the first 28-30 years you did life the way society wanted. In the second time around, you did it your way. Now, at the threshold of the senior years, many individuals begin to wonder again about the deeper meaning of life. They've had careers, raised families, done alot of externals, so they may ask more about what's inside, or about what they can contribute in a bigger sense. In traditional India, this is the time that one would delve deeply into the spiritual, having fulfilled their obligations in the world. In our culture, it could be the time one seeks in one's profession to become more the mentor to others, to share what one has learned. The Chiron return (below) and this second Saturn return often lead clients to Rolfing sessions as they begin to look inward and become more interested in their bodies not as tools of action but as sensate fields of beingness that crave awakening along with a general inner awakening.

A third Saturn return would occur around age 86-88 for those who make it that far – rare in the past but increasingly common in the our times. It may be a time of transition and looking toward the next stage – death – whether examined consciously or reluctantly because of illness, or it may be a time of deep reflection on one's life as a whole. I have had a few Rolfing clients in this age group. They have sometimes been people who are fighting age and pain with difficulty, and sometimes elders who still have optimism and enthusiasm for life and are looking for ways to keep mobile to keep enjoying life.

Chiron Return

The Chiron return is another event, at about age 50, that signals a turn inward, toward wisdom and maturity. You can read about it here, where the author says that it "delineates the end of the heroic youth, as we enter the realm of 'elder.'" This transition is easier for those who have had an inward or spiritual orientation already in life (who have "done their work" on themselves), harder for those who have sought their identity in the externals (looks, status, income...). Sometimes bodywork at this life stage can help give a person ground for this turning, as well as ease some of the accumulated aches and pains and restrictions from their life out in the world.

Uranus Opposition

The Uranus opposition occurs at around age 42 and correlates to what we commonly term the "midlife crisis." While Saturn builds structure, the planet Uranus is about awakening, freeing oneself from constraints, and opening to dynamic energy. At age 42, Uranus has moved halfway around your birthchart and is opposite to where it was at your birth, bringing with it a torrent of energy. Remember the lyrics to the Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime"?:

You may find yourself living in a shotgun shackYou may find yourself in another part of the worldYou may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobileYou may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wifeAnd you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?

This is the wake-up call when suddenly you see your life afresh and ask yourself, "well, how did I get here – and what am I going to do about it?" Barbara Hand Clow, in her uniquely titled astrology book "Liquid Light of Sex: Kundalini, Astrology, and the Key Life Transitions", believes the kundalini energy of the body may spontaneously awaken at this time and try to move up the spine through the various chakras. Wherever you have a block, that's where your "midlife crisis" issues will manifest; in her view, this is commonly around the heart chakra for men (therefore the red sports car, jettisoning the wife, and falling freshly in love) and the throat chakra for women (issues of creative expression, "being heard" in ones life). This is another great time to get a Rolfing series as it can help free the body from the sense of restriction many people have from tight fascial wrapping, allowing more vitality and energy flow.

In Conclusion

There's no one "right" time to get a Rolfing series – except when you feel compelled by life to work with what presents through your body. What is interesting to me is how often that coincides with one of these life cycles, and how often these life cycles unfold as stated, which says to me that there's something here for even the skeptic to consider.

January 07, 2011

It's a new year, which brings a new energy. Already the phone is ringing with some new clients wanting to get Rolfing® sessions - must be New Year's resolutions or the return of the light in Seattle as our days start to get a little longer. Or maybe alot of them are entering a numerological "personal year" that motivates their attention toward the body.

When I was in my 20s I was very interested in astrology, tarot, and numerology. Now my spiritual interests have taken a different direction, but I still give note to certain timing cycles. Yesterday I posted about an astrologer friend's outlook for 2011. Here I'll say a bit about personal life cycles from numerology and what I might correlate to the motivation to get Rolfing sessions or other bodywork, and tomorrow I'll write about life cycles in astrology.

Numerology is fairly simple. There are things you can learn from your name, and also from your birthdate. Adding up the month, day, and year you were born gives you your "birth path" number. Then each year you add up the month and day of your birthday with the number of the current year, and tht gives you your current "personal year" according to numerology. This is a nine year cycle, starting with 1, going through 9, then back to one.

Here's how you calculate it. Say you were born today, January 7, in 1970. That would be

A 3 personal year is said to be an outgoing year of social activity, expansion, play, creativity.

The years I pay the most attention to are the ending years of a cycle (8, 9) to consider what is outmoded in my life, and the early ones in a new cycle (1-4) as that is when you are building the base for what you want to accomplish.

I'm more conscious of correlation between clients getting Rolfing sessions and the larger astrological cycles (which will be in my post tomorrow) because I can determine that just from someone's age, but I imagine there are relationships with numerology too, nuances that may alter the focus of why the person seeks my services. For example, someone getting bodywork in a 1 year may be looking to support a new start, while someone getting work in a 9 year may be trying to end old troublesome patterns.

I'm in a 3 year in 2011, and this is proving to be kind of fun (fitting the theme of play and social activity), trotting out and sharing something that was a very creative endeavor for me in my 20s. I don't have a numerologist to recommend, but you can find alot of do-it-yourself info on the web. Tomorrow I'll share my recommendations for astrologers.

May 28, 2009

I was pleased to see Huffington Post's article about the Enneagram. While basic, it's a good introduction to a very deep topic. Just yesterday my friend Seattle acupuncturist Kory Kapitke and I were talking about the Enneagram, and how it can be useful to understand ourselves and others. He's an acupuncturist, I'm a Rolfer™ and craniosacral therapist, so we both work with people all day long - people in pain, people in transformation, people curious about alternatives. Sometimes a client is on a growth path and curious to hear about something like the Enneagram, curious about how Rolfing® works to bring the body into alignment in gravity, interested in the mystical aspect of craniosacral work... Other clients are working the body dimension primarily - in pain, healing from an injury - but my knowing something about the Enneagram can help me relate to them better even if we never talk about such things. It can help me understand what makes a person tick, sometimes it can help me understand how to better communicate with a person, sometimes it helps me to see my own blind spots.

The Enneagram is ultimately a multi-faceted and multi-layered system that can be used to understand oneself on many levels, including one's evolution, and to understand reality itself. At the most commonly known level the Enneagram consists of the nine Enneatypes, which are listed in the HuffPo article (Reformer, Helper, Achiever...) These are ways we can understand our selves and how we operate, in the same way that knowing the position of planets in your astrology chart can give you information about yourself. However, if you are interested in spiritual growth, it is important to understand that the Enneatypes are ego fixations - manifestations of the ego, the personality - and not representations of reality or the potential of the true self. To get stuck thinking "I'm a Five" or "I'm a Nine" is to forget your potential and to put your being into a pigeonhole. In truth we all visit all the Enneatypes, although we have particular ones our personalities are more constellated around.

Just as I want to keep from putting myself into an Enneatype box, I also want to give that space to my Rolfing® and craniosacral clients as I think about them and how to best help them in their processes of transformation and health. If I limit my thinking about a client to "he's blah blah blah" or "she's such a ___," I'm seeing only a limited aspect of the person's personality, and I may also be perceiving inaccurately, based on my own predispositions and projections. So if I do have an idea of a client's Enneatype or character style, I want to hold that loosely, as a way to better understand and communicate with him or her, not to think that is all s/he is.

And then there's another level of the Enneagram, the Nine Holy Ideas. From this perspective, it is understood that each Enneatype or ego fixation is actually a misunderstanding of one of the nine Holy Ideas, which are a map of the true nature of reality, the enlightened perspective. In contrast, the Enneatypes are the ego's best and imperfect attempt to find it's way towards this truth. Thus, the Enneatype One is a "reformer" because he thinks he has to change himself and others to seek perfection, while the Holy Idea of Point One, "Holy Perfection" tells us that reality is inherently perfect as it is - as all the great mystical traditions say. So the Enneatype of Point One has it partially right - he knows it's about perfection - but he is mistaken and deluded in thinking that it is up to him to create perfection rather than to awaken to a realization of the perfection that already exists.